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Clearly, the term "early adopter" is relative. Many buyers of the 2004 Prius called themselves "pioneers" and "early adopters" even though there were only tweaks

About fifty chapters of tweaks between the 2003 and 2004 model Prius documented in the New Car Features manual. Some chapters have dozens of tweaks and some only have a couple. I never counted the actual number but around 2,000 would be my guess.

Originally Posted by daniel

in the drive train and a new body style

And lights, seats, motors, safety devices, and suspension, HVAC, the list goes on. I don't think there is even one part in common, other than some fasteners and maybe the horn, between the 2003 and 2004.

Originally Posted by daniel

from the 1997 (Japan) and 2001 (USA) Prius.

I purchased a 2001 Prius for Denise and she still loves that car, so I reckon I can call myself an early adopter.

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I submit that the changes from the 2001 to the 2004 Prius were on a par with the changes in any new car model. The people who called themselves "pioneers" did so to tout their willingness to "take a chance" on the hybrid concept, which had already been on U.S. roads since 2001 and Japanese roads since 1997, from a car company with an impeccable reputation for quality. Buyers of the 2004 Prius (including me) were not pioneers or early adopters in any rational sense of the word. Most of the changes were due to the liftback body style, regardless of how many pages of new stuff. The drive train is what those 2004 and 2005 Prius buyers were talking about, and that was tried and tested technology by the time of the 2004 Prius.

The people who paid substantial fees to get on the Tesla list before the Roadster even went into production, were indeed early adopters. And I'd extend that honorific to anyone who bought it in the first year or so, before reliability was well established.

I consider myself an EV early adopter for buying the Zap Xebra and driving it as my daily car for 4 years. I was a very late adopter of the Roadster, being one of the last buyers.

---First off, my apologies for bringing this up after a month....which I fully understand is a long time in the internet world but the bottom of another thread suggested it and this is a great thread with many valid points worth keeping alive----

Originally Posted by strider

Toyota or MB will buy them if they get into trouble. Toyota can't have a bunch of RAV4-EV's on the road w/ no way to repair them.

It seems really unlikely that this would ever happen but I highly suspect that someone big would jump at the opportunity to own their technology.

Originally Posted by ryanjm

.......Heck, you can go to delorean.com right now and order any part you want.

Like others, though, I don't see that happening. And for all you conspiracy theorists, Detroit no longer has the clout to try and run a company like Tesla out of town the way they did with Tucker and, to a lesser extent, DeLorean.

Holy crap your right. How awesome is that.
I have long felt that if Tucker were given a better chance the auto world would have looked much different. Far too often the revolutionary ideas are not appreciated in their time.

One thing that may or may not be a slight debate modifier is the general fact that people are scared of orange cased cables commonly found in many HEVs and the Leaf. There are not many technicians willing to go beyond the usual maintenance items. In Tucker and even DeLoreans' time the running gear and repairs were similar to something else on the road. There is usually a short transition experienced but a technician can typically make a brand switch with relative ease, and successfully repair almost anything with an ICE. Tesla vehicles are not going to be looked at like that. Battery degradation monitoring and cell servicing are not really going to be items that anyone would really find much of a market in at least right now.

Originally Posted by neroden

If Tesla goes bankrupt, you should feel free to violate the clause in the purchase agreement which says that you agree not to reverse-engineer the car.

Edit: I'm not including the case where they go bankrupt and then get bought up by someone else, in which case you will have service from whoever buys them. I'm talking about the very unlikely case where somehow they go into chapter 7 and sink with their trade secrets stil secret.

That would be interesting...I have been talking with people who were interested in re writing things the AV unit software or alternate engine tuning on unconventional engines, none of them have ever had much success (that I know of) but it would interesting if it were Linux based. If there were a place for non warranty speed modifications it would be there...but again I doubt there will be much of a market for increasing speed and acceleration on these cars since they are already quite fast now.